تويت
The reasons for the high Maya penetration in the VFX market are historical, technical and psychological (as you can see from your own posts 
).
When movies started using 3D software back in the 1980s, there were no Maya or 3D Studio. The first applications were running on the only hardware that could do anything remotely useable in reasonable time - Silicon Graphics machines with IRIX operating system. These machines were expensive, and the software for them was not much cheaper either. It was an elite club where only studios with huge budgets and highly trained staff could afford to be members in.
Around the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, some hobby programmers started developing applications for home computers like the Atari ST and the Amiga that could sort of do 3D graphics in their most basic form. With the advent of Lightwave 3D and esp. 3D Studio which was the first really popular 3D software under $5000 that could run on an Intel PC, people esp. in the architectural visualization and (in the case of Lightwave) TV production could start doing relatively cheap animation. TV productions like Seaquest DSV and Babylon 5 used Amiga renderfarms to create pretty impressive animations using Lightwave, while 3D Studio was mainly dominating games and architecture thanks to the fact that most games were being made for the PC with lower budgets and Autodesk was also making Autocad.
At this point, movies were still made using Alias Power Animator and Softimage 3D. The applications were still expensive and running on hardware out if this world. Obviously, the perception was that they were "High End" (read: High Price), while 3D software for the desktop PC was Low End. This was also true for the feature set. The first movie in history to use 3D Studio DOS software for an effect sequence was, as far as I know, Johnny Mnemonic. Unfortunately, the movie was a flop so despite the fact the final battle sequence in the movie was done in Softimage 3D, it added to the general perception that 3D Studio makes movies suck
In 1993, the Yost Group who developed 3D Studio for Autodesk started working on a new generation software for the upcoming Microsoft Windows NT operating system which was designed together with DEC. While the program was not targeted specifically at movies, it was assumed that it would be possible to be used in that area. When Max 1.0 came out in 1996, it moved a step up from the Low End to something like Mid End, but retained the low-end price under $4K which did not help much in the perception of the masses who still thought that powerful stuff must be also expensive. Prices for Softimage 3D and Alias Power Animator were still an order of magnitude higher and the hardware still expensive.
Windows NT came out and people started slowly moving to it in the general business, but not in the area of 3D. So Microsoft decided to buy Softimage and port it to Windows NT to prove that it is possible to run "High End" software on Windows. The conversion took longer than expected and in the mean time, Silicon Graphics had acquired both Alias and Wavefront and merged them into a company which developed an application based on both companies' know-how called Maya. Since Softimage 3D was seen as "fallen in the hands of MS and with uncertain future", most visual effects studios who already had not only expensive SGI hardware but also highly effective IRIX-based pipelines started switching over to Maya which was running on IRIX, too. Suddenly, Maya was everywhere because it came "from the High-End" replacing existing Alias PA and Softimage 3D seats. No old company was crazy enough to switch to Windows NT which simply did not provide the stability and powerful command line controls of a UNIX OS.
The first movie 3D Studio MAX was used largely in was the opening of Lost In Space. (Magic Camera used both Lightwave and Max 2.0 Beta on it). Once again, the movie flopped and added another drop of "Max sux" to the general perception, while success stories like Jurassic Park enforced the belief that high-end work requires high-end software (in these days, it was even true).
A few companies started by 3D Studio users like Blur Studios (whose founders worked on Johnny Mnemonic), Frantic Films and Digital Dimension decided to build their infrastructure around Intel PCs and Windows NT because it was cheaper to start up and the quality of the results were slowly getting comparable to the output of "High End" applications. Still, 3D Studio MAX was developed and marketed by Kinetix/Discreet/Autodesk as an alround 3D application for all markets, while Maya was developed for a specific niche market of movie making and excelled in providing the toolset and workflow needed by the existing pipelines of large VFX studios. Perception that "running a Ferrari" was important for the end result led some smart people to placing SGI logos on Windows boxes leading clients visiting their offices to the "Wow, you must be good" statements.
Interestingly enough, when 3D Studio R3 was released back in 1993, the program had already more users than all high-end applications COMBINED. Running on cheap PCs also led to large illegal following with about every student out there running a "carribean" version of the software on the home machine. While this continued to fuel the impression that "a mass program cannot be as powerful as what Hollywood uses", it really made the application profitable since the beginning - users of Max were largely available and their bosses bought what they could affort and find operators for. So from business point of view 3D Studio has been a success, but with a constant battle to prove that is not "just for games".
The failure of Softimage 3D on Windows NT made Microsoft sell it to Avid, but the newly designed Softimage code named Sumatra and later XSI was intially also running on Windows NT with later ports to other operating systems. Maya was also available for Windows NT so running all 3D applications on Intel PCs was technically possible.
With Linux added to the mix, all "High-End" applications started slashing prices and even became cheaper than Max, hoping to penetrate the "Low-End" high-volume makets of game development, visualization and even web design. These attempts were partially successful, but the general perception and especially the existing pipelines of the visual effects vs. game development studios kept Max stong in the games and Maya in movies.
Some new studios like The Orphanage decided to use the best sides of each one in a mixed pipeline, leading to a peaceful coexistence of Maya and Max in the same studio, but outside their walls the war still rages on.
With the acquisition of Alias by Autodesk, the marketing appears to be fueling this separation to keep both in their "niche" markets - Maya is presented as tool for VFX, while Max is for games and visualization. But the toolsets are coming closer and closer so nowadays it is more about "what are you comfortable with" than "which one can do the job". At the same time, the toolsets used for games are getting very similar to those needed for film - character animation in both requires similar rigs and skinning/texturing approaches, and the 3rd party renderers choice for Max is simply amazing which led even some studios like ILM and Digital Domain to use Max on some projects because of its integration with Brazil and V-Ray - even Star Wars used Max+Brazil for God's sake!
(My exclamation is because I like almost everyone in my age group started doing computer graphics thanks to the inspiration of the original trilogy - my first 3D Studio model ever was an X-Wing fighter)
).When movies started using 3D software back in the 1980s, there were no Maya or 3D Studio. The first applications were running on the only hardware that could do anything remotely useable in reasonable time - Silicon Graphics machines with IRIX operating system. These machines were expensive, and the software for them was not much cheaper either. It was an elite club where only studios with huge budgets and highly trained staff could afford to be members in.
Around the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, some hobby programmers started developing applications for home computers like the Atari ST and the Amiga that could sort of do 3D graphics in their most basic form. With the advent of Lightwave 3D and esp. 3D Studio which was the first really popular 3D software under $5000 that could run on an Intel PC, people esp. in the architectural visualization and (in the case of Lightwave) TV production could start doing relatively cheap animation. TV productions like Seaquest DSV and Babylon 5 used Amiga renderfarms to create pretty impressive animations using Lightwave, while 3D Studio was mainly dominating games and architecture thanks to the fact that most games were being made for the PC with lower budgets and Autodesk was also making Autocad.
At this point, movies were still made using Alias Power Animator and Softimage 3D. The applications were still expensive and running on hardware out if this world. Obviously, the perception was that they were "High End" (read: High Price), while 3D software for the desktop PC was Low End. This was also true for the feature set. The first movie in history to use 3D Studio DOS software for an effect sequence was, as far as I know, Johnny Mnemonic. Unfortunately, the movie was a flop so despite the fact the final battle sequence in the movie was done in Softimage 3D, it added to the general perception that 3D Studio makes movies suck
In 1993, the Yost Group who developed 3D Studio for Autodesk started working on a new generation software for the upcoming Microsoft Windows NT operating system which was designed together with DEC. While the program was not targeted specifically at movies, it was assumed that it would be possible to be used in that area. When Max 1.0 came out in 1996, it moved a step up from the Low End to something like Mid End, but retained the low-end price under $4K which did not help much in the perception of the masses who still thought that powerful stuff must be also expensive. Prices for Softimage 3D and Alias Power Animator were still an order of magnitude higher and the hardware still expensive.
Windows NT came out and people started slowly moving to it in the general business, but not in the area of 3D. So Microsoft decided to buy Softimage and port it to Windows NT to prove that it is possible to run "High End" software on Windows. The conversion took longer than expected and in the mean time, Silicon Graphics had acquired both Alias and Wavefront and merged them into a company which developed an application based on both companies' know-how called Maya. Since Softimage 3D was seen as "fallen in the hands of MS and with uncertain future", most visual effects studios who already had not only expensive SGI hardware but also highly effective IRIX-based pipelines started switching over to Maya which was running on IRIX, too. Suddenly, Maya was everywhere because it came "from the High-End" replacing existing Alias PA and Softimage 3D seats. No old company was crazy enough to switch to Windows NT which simply did not provide the stability and powerful command line controls of a UNIX OS.
The first movie 3D Studio MAX was used largely in was the opening of Lost In Space. (Magic Camera used both Lightwave and Max 2.0 Beta on it). Once again, the movie flopped and added another drop of "Max sux" to the general perception, while success stories like Jurassic Park enforced the belief that high-end work requires high-end software (in these days, it was even true).
A few companies started by 3D Studio users like Blur Studios (whose founders worked on Johnny Mnemonic), Frantic Films and Digital Dimension decided to build their infrastructure around Intel PCs and Windows NT because it was cheaper to start up and the quality of the results were slowly getting comparable to the output of "High End" applications. Still, 3D Studio MAX was developed and marketed by Kinetix/Discreet/Autodesk as an alround 3D application for all markets, while Maya was developed for a specific niche market of movie making and excelled in providing the toolset and workflow needed by the existing pipelines of large VFX studios. Perception that "running a Ferrari" was important for the end result led some smart people to placing SGI logos on Windows boxes leading clients visiting their offices to the "Wow, you must be good" statements.
Interestingly enough, when 3D Studio R3 was released back in 1993, the program had already more users than all high-end applications COMBINED. Running on cheap PCs also led to large illegal following with about every student out there running a "carribean" version of the software on the home machine. While this continued to fuel the impression that "a mass program cannot be as powerful as what Hollywood uses", it really made the application profitable since the beginning - users of Max were largely available and their bosses bought what they could affort and find operators for. So from business point of view 3D Studio has been a success, but with a constant battle to prove that is not "just for games".
The failure of Softimage 3D on Windows NT made Microsoft sell it to Avid, but the newly designed Softimage code named Sumatra and later XSI was intially also running on Windows NT with later ports to other operating systems. Maya was also available for Windows NT so running all 3D applications on Intel PCs was technically possible.
With Linux added to the mix, all "High-End" applications started slashing prices and even became cheaper than Max, hoping to penetrate the "Low-End" high-volume makets of game development, visualization and even web design. These attempts were partially successful, but the general perception and especially the existing pipelines of the visual effects vs. game development studios kept Max stong in the games and Maya in movies.
Some new studios like The Orphanage decided to use the best sides of each one in a mixed pipeline, leading to a peaceful coexistence of Maya and Max in the same studio, but outside their walls the war still rages on.
With the acquisition of Alias by Autodesk, the marketing appears to be fueling this separation to keep both in their "niche" markets - Maya is presented as tool for VFX, while Max is for games and visualization. But the toolsets are coming closer and closer so nowadays it is more about "what are you comfortable with" than "which one can do the job". At the same time, the toolsets used for games are getting very similar to those needed for film - character animation in both requires similar rigs and skinning/texturing approaches, and the 3rd party renderers choice for Max is simply amazing which led even some studios like ILM and Digital Domain to use Max on some projects because of its integration with Brazil and V-Ray - even Star Wars used Max+Brazil for God's sake!
(My exclamation is because I like almost everyone in my age group started doing computer graphics thanks to the inspiration of the original trilogy - my first 3D Studio model ever was an X-Wing fighter
)
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